Our Sojourning Community (Hebrews 13:7-19)

/ Belgrade United Reformed Church/

Hebrews is concluding the exhortation for us to continue our sojourn under the sun. We are the Lord's people, called to honor the Lord, and a people oriented to heaven. The Lord uses the preaching of the gospel as the primary means to keep us on the way. We are also reminded about the significance of prayer being the means that we earthlings can use to reach the inner recesses of the heavenly tabernacle.

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Established in Heaven (James 5:7-11)

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James greets the church as sojourners through this world as James greets us as saints in the dispersion.  We are a people who are to see ourselves as a guaranteed a land, but we are not in that land.  There is no doubt that living life under the sun is challenging, and we can be tempted to give up on the sojourn.  We, like Israel, might wonder if the Lord is coming to fulfill his promises.  How do we know that the Lord is fulfilling His promises?  How do we know that the Lord will bring us into the promised land?  How does this impact our lives today?

Diaspora People (James 1:1)

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We might think that we cannot relate to what it must have been like for Israel to be in exile.  The reality is that James greets the church as a group of people who are in exile.  We might think that this life is a waste because it does not measure up to what we want.  We need to listen to James who is laying out for us that this life probably will not meet our expectations because it is not supposed to meet our expectations.  So, why follow our God then if this life will not give us all that we think it should?